Terra Incognita

dun dun da dun
I will be walking down the aisle (or hallways) of Wedding and Home Magazine beginning this coming Monday! Wedding and Home is a 300+ page, glossy magazine, by IPC Media Ltd. This is no Vox. IPC Media also does In Style, the New Yorker, tvGuide, Horse and Hound and others. The building where I'll be working is where the London branches of all those other magazines are located. I'm so excited! As are my roommates who can't wait to thumb through the magazine, comparing their favorite wedding dresses. Lauren, the London Program director who found the internships, said that this was the magazine where she thought I would get the most design opportunities. Instead of doing an interview, like everyone else in the program who is interning, Fiona, the lady from Wedding and Home just wants me to have a full trial day this Monday. I have a feeling that means that if they like me, I'll be going full speed ahead starting next week! I probably will be fetching tea, running errands and answering the phones for a while, I imagine. Lauren said that previous interns have done the mock-ups for upcoming issues, meaning that I will be working with the design programs, although most likely not doing the creative process. While the creative part is the most fun, that's fine with me; the more experience I have with the programs, the better.

the others
My roommates each got amazing internships as well. Ellen got Tatler, the British version of Vogue by Conde Nast. (For those of you foreign to the media business, Conde Nast is one of the top media conglomerates, publishing other magazines such as Glamour, GQ, Vanity Fair, House and Garden, Conde Nast Traveller.) Meg got Capital City Records, a major local radio group with three big name stations. Mary Pat got CNBC (she has to be there at 6 in the morning starting a week from this coming Monday . . . and she never wakes up to her alarm!). Sarah got a human rights activist group. Every internship seems to be a perfect fit for each of us (except for Mary Pat getting up at 4 in the morning). Oh! Laine got the best internship for her, as well. She'll be doing PR work with a small company that works with theatres and will get to go to shows like the Reduced Shakespeare Company's other performances and the Vagina Monologues for free as well as work with the actors to arrange media interviews! How cool is that! This program is great. There is absolutely no way that any of us would have been able to land any of these on our own. My first internship, had I been sent to find one by myself, most likely would not have been a big, glossy magazine.

the days gone by
It's been pretty laid back. Tuesday night we had our first British Life and Culture lecture. A guy from another university talked about the cultural differences between the U.K. and the U.S. He had studied at KU during his graduate years, so we bonded, the two of us, talking about Kansas wheat fields. Did you know that Kensington, the area where we are living for this program, is one of the top one or two most expensive places to live in all of Europe! Now I know what the program was a bit pricey!
Wednesday we went to the London Museum. It was a little boring, to tell the truth, but not bad.
Yesterday I went running in Kensington Park. I can't get over that. Kensington Park! And I went running there! Right by the Palace where Diana lived! Then I successfully navigated the Underground by myself and found the IPC Media building. It's on the South Bank of the Thames, so I wandered around there for a while (I saw a black man in a kilt and three teenaged Amish boys), and got some good shots of the sun setting behind Big Ben and Parliament.
I'd signed up for a small walking tour of Mayfair, the ritzy (including the Ritz) part of London. It was really interesting. I learned that Prince Charles will not become King Charles III when he is crowned. The two previous Kind Charleses had unlucky reigns, so he has decided that he will take his father's name, and will be King George VII, when he is crowned. Interesting, eh?
Ellen and I decided not to go to Paris this weekend. The program is taking a group tour there in a month and I decided that if I were going to go to France twice during this semester, I'd rather go to a different part, like Normandy or the Riviera. So We're going to check out the Portobello Market this weekend instead.

observations
*I can't understand a British person who has to speak to me through a microphone-like-thing (like at a ticket counter).
*I am getting very used to walking absolutely everywhere.
*Thank God for Fabreeze. Doing a load of laundry costs the equivalent of about $7!
*We live a block from where Sir Alfred Hitchcock lived.
*The Brits use the word, "keen" a lot.
*Buying groceries here is a lot less expensive than in the States. Eating out here is generally more expensive than in the States. Guess which one I'll be doing most often.
*There are now three couples on the program. We haven't even been here for a week! You've got to be kidding me!
*They play American pop music in nearly all their pubs.